New Arrivals

[Capt St. John 0]

Mikel is looking out at the stars in his quarters as the USS Perseus, drops out of warp in the Cardassian system. He sighs quietly to himself as the stars revert to their normal look. He hadn't asked for this assignment as Sky Harbor Aegis' new Commanding Officer..in fact he hadn't been looking for a new command at all. The Perseus, which he had commanded for the last five years, was still a brand new ship really and that appealed to him. The fact that it is a Prometheus class also appealed to him. It was a sign that the Federation, after the wars with the Dominion and the Cardassian and the near wars with the Romulans, was finally paying attention to the fact that the galaxy wasn't a peaceful place. And that while peaceful contact and exploration was still one of the primary goals of Starfleet and the Federation..the fact remained that there was no guarantee that the relative peace that had settled about the Federation since the end of the Dominion war was going to last. Sooner or later the Federation would find itself in a new conflict and it needed starships that weren't just exploration vessels if the Federation was going to survive. And Prometheus class ships weren't exploration ships, though they could fill that role rather well, in their hearts they were warships. Even if there was some trepidation among Starfleet Command and the Federation Council on the message that the Prometheus class and the Sovereign class sent...they were still necessary. Sooner or later the darkness would return, the Breen attack on Sky Harbor Aegis was a testament to that fact.

 

And now Mikel is being asked to give up command of a ship that can dance across the stars in order to take up command of a immobile fortress in the heart of what used to be enemy space, one who's mission was to oversee restoring that former enemy to a position where that former enemy could one day become a future enemy. Mikel shakes his head slightly, thinking that was a purely human thing to do. But then, humans were the glue of the Federation, whether they realized it or not. And the Federation had taken his people in when they could have turned them away. And for that grace given, Mikel could stand being put in charge of the exercise in cosmic politics that was waiting just ahead, if for only a little while.

 

Besides, he had been commanding one Starfleet ship or another for the last eighty years, perhaps it was time for a change. Even if it wasn't quite the temporary retirement that Kiera had been asking him to take.